Day of the Locust (Listen for Pleasure)

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Summary: This gem of a book speaks volumes about Los Angeles
Review: In this wonderfully crafted mini-novel, Nathanael West captures the cultural essence of boomtown Los Angeles during its tumultuous adolescence. The dark, coarse, seamy side of the "California dream" is vividly portrayed here. The plot is not really the point in this period piece; the truth is in the characters and their always unfortunate interactions. For those who seek to understand the social history of southern California, this novel might be more useful than a half-dozen academic treatises.

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Summary: Belongs on the 100 best novels list
Review: Now I know why Flannery O'Connor so admired West. His prose is crystal clear, his craft virtuoso. His characters, however ugly, are utterly compelling and tragic. There was simply no stopping them. They would hang on to their delusions even if it destroys them. And then there are the people with no hope whatsoever, existing just for surface pleasure and materialism. Tod, the 'artist', tries to help these people, and nearly goes mad with frustration. West's compassion for these people (cloaked by his biting sarcasm and wit) makes this book a great work of art. It, like O'Connor's "Wise Blood," are among the masterpieces of American fiction. Read it and be ennobled.

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Summary: like "less than zero" in the thirties
Review: Some of the depravities of Hollywood and LA depicted here seem slightly quaint today (now that the area has had sixty years to surpass West's vision), but this book still hits the mark with a remarkable frequency. When West is writing at his best he functions as a baleful documentor of what would grow into the LA we all know and love. Cults, pseudoreligions, celebrity-worship, crowds, riots, child actors, hodgepodge architecture, and an industry dedicated to the falsification of reality: all of them are here, and West's writing on these afflictions still retains force today. Ultimately, West sees LA as an environment in which no human goodness can survive-a kind of moral black hole-and this is certainly reflected in the novel's array of characters, who are largely a batch of self-centered xenophobes. Even Tod, ostensibly the novel's "hero," tries (more than once) to summon up the courage to simply rape Faye. In other words, this book won't be a big hit with people who use "I didn't like any of the characters" as a criticism: a shame, because there's a reasonably good study of human desperation to be found here, and West's focus on how certain environments and cultures exacerbate that desperation is still profoundly relevant to our own day. A quick read, not very difficult, dense, or lyrical, but a fine addition to the "literature" on LA.

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Summary: Characters on the fringe of 30's Hollywood
Review: The movie industry is the draw and an incredibly odd collection of characters find themselves living marginalized lives in the shadow of early Hollywood. Their lives interact in a series of bizarre scenes fueled primarily by lust for the one female character who is completely self-absorbed and has somehow transformed the attention from men she encounters into her own fanasy version of celebrity.
There is a dark undertone of violence that finally erupts in a random and surprising way that sems to be a rebellion against the perversion of reality that Hollywood represents.
Not a great book..but a memorable one.

Rating:
Summary: Its a mad, mad, mad, mad Hollywood
Review: West makes a successful attempt to show the reality of Hollywood instead of the sugarcoated glamour usually permeated by the media. But is it the reality? Or is it just the perspective of a disillusioned writer? We will never know for sure, but us humans tend to take tragedy as more tangible than fantasy so it sure seems real. What makes this dark uncensored view even more shocking is the fact that it was written in the 1930s, when Hollywood glitz was supposed to be in its heyday. People were still jaded back then as they are now. West has a knack for character psychology, especially when showing how pathetic and desperate humans can be. I recommend Day of the Locusts mainly for that reason; you will find characters who want someone who wants someone else, the desperate young aspiring actress who is not yet corrupted but very soon will be, the stoic midwestern man who is out of his depths in the lies and games of Hollywood folk, the ordinary people around Hollywood just waiting for their chance with a rabid intensity, and the artist-narrator's who invisions all the madness around him as an apocalypse that will end in the "Burning of Los Angeles". I promise some characters in this book will make an indelible impression on you.